A forum for doers
At an Innovation Forum hosted by Margaret Dovgal, Mary Mytting, executive director of the Northern Innovation Network, and Shannon Stenge, the network’s regional liaison for Northeastern B.C., made a simple case: recognise what you’ve already built, and take it to market. The network’s mission is to help people who “MacGyver” their way through northern challenges see that those fixes are often intellectual property with commercial potential.
“A lot of what I’m doing up here is working with people to help them see themselves as innovators,” Stenge said. Too often, practical solutions stay on-site, undocumented and unprotected, rather than becoming products that scale.
From field hacks to IP
Both guests described a pattern across the North: veterans of oil and gas, forestry, marine and construction quietly invent clever work-arounds, then move on. One anecdote involved a major pipeline owner who had accumulated a trove of inventions over decades, none of them patented or licensed. The missed opportunity is twofold—value left on the table for the inventor and diffusion lost to the broader economy.
That mindset, Stenge suggested, must shift beyond the local: “how do we get our people in this region to see themselves as people who can solve a global problem and not just a local problem.”
Proof in the prototypes
Asked to name favourites, Mytting pointed to Forefront Energy’s power systems built for remote wells. “They have created a solar power generator that is powerful enough to run a gas well,” she said, describing a solution that supports emissions goals by replacing methane-bleeding equipment with electric controls in a region with ample sunlight. She also highlighted a zero-emissions generator concept that harvests electricity from pressure differentials in gas-flow control, and a Prince George entrepreneur who designed an ultra-thin, walkable solar panel for an electric catamaran—evidence that northern ingenuity spans sectors.
For Mytting, the through-line is experience: people who “work with something every day know how to unlock it,” and those insights deserve protection and a path to market. As she put it, “we also have to learn to share our innovation and make sure the rest of the province and the rest of the world knows about it.”
How to start: share, then scale
The Northern Innovation Network wants would-be founders to begin with a conversation—about the problem, the prototype, and the path to customers. Mytting urged creators not to self-censor: “don’t sit on it. Bring it forward. Talk to someone about it.” That “someone” could be a chamber of commerce, Community Futures office, a tech accelerator, or the network itself.
Stenge’s advice echoed the same openness: “there are people that want to help you.” Too many innovators, he said, fixate on protecting an idea or on the slice of a small pie, rather than realising that collaboration can make the pie bigger—and their slice more valuable.
The takeaway
Northern B.C. is rich with practical problem-solvers. The next step is cultural: recognise innovation when you’ve built it, protect it, and ask for help to commercialise it. In a world eager for cleaner, smarter, tougher tech, the North’s field-tested fixes can be more than local solutions—they can be global products.
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